You never know when a random stranger will help make your dreams come true.
But it happened for a Chipotle delivery driver from Arizona who wanted to give his fiancée the wedding of her dreams.
The driver was making a delivery run when he left a note to a customer sharing that he was driving on the side to give his fiancée her dream wedding and added that "any additional tip" through the ordering app or Venmo would be appreciated. To his surprise, the note went viral.
Erica Hernandez shared in a TikTok last week that she had “ordered some Chipotle,” and was pleasantly surprised when she found a note from the “delivery guy.”
Hernandez wrote alongside the note, “I don’t have a lot of followers, but I hope this reaches the right people 😭.”
Her post went viral, garnering over 33 million views in less than a week, with several people commenting on how “sweet” the gesture was.
Paul Slobodzian, the Chipotle driver who gave the note, shared with Fox 10 Phoenix how surprised he was by the outpouring of kindness he received after the video was posted, with several people donating money for his wedding day.
"I never set out to leave those notes with the intention of somebody making a video about it or even trying to broadcast it to anybody besides the person I was delivering to," Slobodzian told the outlet.
His fiancée Aly Perkins said that they knew something had happened when his phone “just started blowing up" with supportive messages and donations.
"We didn't really expect anything to come of this and the fact that a stranger got our note and felt so compelled to post it on the internet and advocate for two strangers is unbelievable," Perkins said.
Slobodzian shared his own TikTok explaining that he and Perkins had been together for six years and got engaged last year. “We realized how much it was going to cost to have the wedding that we wanted,” he said in the video, adding that he and Perkins decided together to take on jobs delivering UberEats to save up.
He said the two had been working with UberEats to save up for 15 months before the video went viral and had been in the “final five weeks” of the last stretch of saving. “Within the last 24 hours [of Hernandez’s video being posted] we have earned enough to be able to stop driving and we’ll be able to reclaim that time to spend together in our engagement,” he shared.
“I don’t even know how to express my gratitude for this to anyone who has reached out who has sent… anything our way that is positive. [It's] truly changed our lives.”
The couple gave Hernandez $1,000 as a 'thank you' for her help and even invited her to their wedding. She gracefully accepted the invitation.
Hernandez told the outlet that she had “just felt really inspired to post it and see if my friends would be willing to donate or any followers that I had on there to donate" — never knowing that she would end up helping change the lives of two people in love.
Source: People